Dastan presents “Blush of the Soil”, a solo exhibition of works by Sam Samiee at Dastan+2. The exhibition will open on Friday, December 25, 2020 and will be on display for public viewing until January 15, 2021. This is the first solo exhibition of works by Sam Samiee at Dastan+2. His work has been previously featured in several exhibitions and international art fair presentations with Dastan including Art Basel Hong Kong, Liste Basel, Artissima, Untitled Art Miami Beach and “A Universal Pink” at the Electric Room. Sam Samiee (b. 1988, Tehran) is an Iranian painter, visual artist, essayist and educator based in Amsterdam and Tehran. In his work, he focuses on the practice of painting and creating exhibitions under the influence of long-term research in Persian poetry and Adab (a synthesis of both ethics and aesthetics), psychoanalysis, and art history: an encounter between Persian literary-humanistic perspective and the visual humanism of Western art history. Sam Samiee’s works have been exhibited in Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (2018), Berlin Biennale X (2018), and Manchester Art Gallery (2014). One of his latest group exhibitions, titled “The Spark is You” curated by Ziba Ardalan for the 200th anniversary of Goethe’s West–östlicher Divan was held at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art (London, 2019). He has finished a twoyear residency at Rijksakadmie van Beeldende Kunsten (2014-2015, Amsterdam) and has been a lecturer at AKI ArtEZ Academy for Art & Design (Enschede, Netherlands) for four years. He is now one of the artistic directors of the artist-run space W139 in Amsterdam and will be a judge of Royal Awards for Modern Painting in Netherlands until 2024— the award he also received in 2016. As a part of the Wolvecamp award for painting in 2018, Sam Samiee has published a book called “Footenotes to Life” in English. Along Samiee, the book has contributions by Benno Temple, director of Kunstmuseum Den Haag and the curator of the Dutch pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019, Dr. Gohar Homayounpour founder of the Freudian Group of Tehran, Dr. Sommayah Kassamali, assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the university of Toronto